Printronix Network Interface Card, User Manual

Page: 19 / 378

What Special Features Are Available?
19
Logical Printer Architecture
The NIC implements a logical printer architecture which gives the
system administrator the possibility to configure the print server to
handle and act upon the print data in several ways. When a print
job comes through the print server, there is a certain logical print
path that it follows before it gets to the printer. Each logical print
path consists of a sequence of logical steps where extra processing
may be performed on the print data before it is sent to the printer.
This ability to preprocess the print data before it is sent to the
printer allows elimination of certain printing problems, or
implementation of printer enhancements that may be difficult and
time consuming to solve or introduce at the system, spool or queue
level. The preprocess ability is also simplistic to perform at the print
server level.
The logical print path for a print job going through NIC consists of
three different phases:
•
Phase 1 - the host sends the job to a destination or queue on
NIC (e.g. d1prn).
•
Phase 2 - the print job passes through the associated “model”
(e.g. model “m1”) on NIC for any extra processing associated
with the model.
•
Phase 3 - the processed print job is directed to the printer for
output.
Logical Printer Architecture